By Staff Writer | L. Farhat
The “Barbie” movie first started filming in March 2022; its announcement created an immediate buzz. People were eating up every piece of information getting released, each one seemingly making the movie more and more perfect, from casting Margot Robbie as Barbie, to hearing news about the set design causing global shortage of fuchsia paint. The hype was insane, and it remained consistent until its release in July 2023.
The movie was an immediate success, gaining billions, and resulting in an explosion of pink and “Hi barbie!” in theatres and outside. Initially, most of its reviews were positive (excluding the dramatics of Ben Shapiro), many raving about it being a feminist movie and how important a speech made by Gloria (played by America Ferrera) was. I, like most people in Lebanon, was looking forward to it dropping in the theatre and finally understanding what everyone was talking about. This intrigue was exacerbated by Lebanon’s Culture Minister decision to ban Barbie, saying it “contradicts the moral and faith values and the established principles in Lebanon”. All this had led me to conclude that Barbie is three things: pink, feminist, and… a musical?
Barbie was labeled by its director, Greta Gerwig, as “most certainly a feminist film”. Greta is famously known to direct movies that truly understand women. Her movies show the complexities of how women often struggle with the societal expectations, their own desires, and their relationships with each other (especially mother-daughter relationships). That is Greta Gerwig’s brand: feminist and real. Knowing this, and hearing about a speech that many said made them cry in the theatre, made me even more sure that Barbie was going to be good. After all, it has an incredible cast, a great director, and billions of dollars in Office. Safe to say, I was extremely disappointed.
Barbie was a good movie; the cast and the direction came through. It was entertaining, funny, and doesn’t bore you through its 114 minutes. It was pink, it was a musical, and it was feminist. However, its feminism was the most disappointing and underwhelming part about it. This movie works as a fun refreshing summer film, not one with cohesive depth. But the director does attempt to create that. Barbie is seen suffering from an existential crisis, which results in her body changing. Going from the personification of every single beauty standard, to having cellulite (gasps). To fix this, Barbie goes to the real world in search of the human who owned her. She discovers that the board of Mattel – made up of silly babbling men- is trying to put her in a box, both literally and figuratively. After a chase, she ends up meeting Gloria, the woman who used to play with her. When they go back to Barbie Land, they find that patriarchy has taken over and stereotypical gender roles have been enforced. It is then that Barbie starts losing her spark, and when we get the famous speech said by America Ferrera. This insanely feminist speech that brought women to tears in the theatre. A speech that talks about the reality of women in life, also known as the most plastic white feminist speech that brought nothing to the table except a “yeah, duh?” reaction.
This movie is PG13, it is directed by Greta Gerwig. The target audience isn’t people who play with Barbies, it’s people who are nostalgic for playing with Barbies. Not little girls, but women who have lived in the “real world”. They know what that means, they had these expectations that Gloria spoke of probably before they even hit puberty. This speech brings absolutely nothing to the table. It is outdated by at least two decades; it is extremely non-intersectional in how it views “womanhood.” It is also delivered very loudly, in a yelling manner, in order to clarify that it’s important. While I do not expect a summer blockbuster to show complex feminist theory, this speech was still extremely underwhelming. It’s supposed to be climactic, instead it was just a “wait, that’s it?” moment. The substance of the speech is so trite, and it remains so regardless of the individual’s familiarity with feminist theory. The only prerequisite you need is experiencing the real world and having a brain. This movie is ‘feminism for dummies’, feeling the need to over explain the most superficial layer of feminism.
This film also has a false feeling of conclusions and solutions. Barbie apologizes to Ken, Barbie Land goes back to being a matriarchal society, and the Kens go back to being homeless. To top it all off, Ken doesn’t apologize to Barbie for everything he did. Not only does the movie end without the logical resolution being equality, but it also ends with a man not being held accountable. While this is indeed a reflection of our real world, it frames equality as an unachievable goal even in a made-up world. The movie doesn’t strive to represent an ideal world but rather presents a false progressive narrative of how the world should be. It brings nothing to the table.
One of the main reasons this movie cannot be accepted as a feminist film is because feminism cannot coexist with capitalist and commercialist messaging, of which the movie largely conveys. There’s a deliberate marketing ploy at work, in an attempt to sway all audiences. Not only is it a huge ad for Mattel, but it’s also a complete rebranding of it. Barbie destroys their old branding and reinvents their image, making it more representative in modern times. It does that while simultaneously littering the movie with new SKUs of Barbie and named clothing items. This film is a commercial for Mattel, which is a huge corporation responsible for the exploitation of women in its factories and labor violations. It also chooses to avoid taking any steps to prevent this abuse, and even encourages it through “its purchasing practices and inaction when labor violations are uncovered” (Zhang). “Barbie” also makes the executives at Mattel look like buffoons and the patriarchy as a result of people feeling bad about themselves instead of showing the executives as ruthless exploiters and patriarchy as a result of capitalism, class society, and more. The movie is a pro-capitalism movie trying to act anti-capitalist, which makes the messages appear very phony.
However, credit must be given where credit is due. When it’s all said and done, Barbie was able to slip in and provide important critiques. It did pass jabs at Mattel, patriarchy, the treatment of women, and even at the movie itself. The word “capitalist” was also used in a negative way. There are some powerful moments in it, however, they take the safest way possible to do it.
The Barbie movie is capitalism masquerading as progressive. It’s a mainstream film made to reach an extremely wide audience without saying anything of any real substance. It is clear that Greta Gerwig wanted to bring something into the movie but was unable to completely do so. This is highlighted in her saying that it’s a feminist film while Mattel denying that. “Barbie” is a fun and enjoyable movie, so long as you don’t look too deep into it.
Reference
Zhang, Xiaochun. “Mattel’s Unceasing Abuse of Chinese Workers: An Investigation of Six Mattel Supplier Factories.” China Labor Watch, 15 Oct. 2013, chinalaborwatch.org/mattels-unceasing-abuse-of-chinese-workers-an-investigation-of-six-mattel-supplier-factories/.